It is better known as the BBC’s primary repository for serious news and comment, but Radio 4 is to enter uncharted territory next week when it broadcasts a bizarre 14-minute poem about Elvis Presley written by Bono, the U2 frontman. The Irish singer has long been a professed superfan of the king of rock’n’roll, and is thought to have written the rhyme, American David, in 1994.

Listeners will be treated to lines such as: “Elvis, with god on his knees/ Elvis, on three TVs/ Elvis, here come the killer bees, head full of honey, potato chips and cheese.”

The BBC has billed it as “delivered plainly, but intensely, by Bono. Some lines are purposefully quintessential Elvis clichés while others make listeners view Elvis in a new light.”

The production company, however, has a slightly different view, with the man who carried out the interview in which Bono spontaneously produced the poem describing it as “effective but bonkers”.

The recording is thought to have been made two years ago by Ten Alps, Bob Geldof’s production company, as part of a Radio 2 programme exploring the history of Sun Records, which released Presley’s first records.

Des Shaw, director of Ten Alps, said: “During an interview with Bono he was talking about how much he loved Elvis and he said he had written a poem about him.

“I said I’d love to hear it and he ran upstairs and grabbed it and just read it for us. He said, ‘There you go, do with it what you want’. I suppose, really, it’s his thoughts on Elvis. He’s a huge fan and he knows an awful, awful lot about his music.

“We’ve been tossing ideas around for two years, keeping on going back to it and trying to work out how we’d use it. It took a while to work out how to produce it in a very effective but bonkers way. It’s a difficult one for Radio 4.”

The epic poem has been mixed over the top of various Elvis tracks, as well as popular culture recordings from the past 50 years.The BBC said: “A unique recording of U2 frontman Bono reading his poem weaves into an atmospheric and artistic radio feature. The poem has been spoken about by a very small group of radio producer friends since it was performed by Bono spontaneously at the end of a radio interview he gave to Des Shaw.”

U2 are huge fans of Presley, and recorded their 1988 album Rattle and Hum at Sun Studios, Memphis, with Bono using a microphone once used by Elvis. Larry Mullen, the band’s drummer, called his first child Aaron Elvis, an inversion of Presley’s first names. In recent performances Bono has taken to the stage wearing eyeliner, telling journalists that he thought he looked like Elvis’s stillborn twin brother, Jesse. “Which, maybe, is in poor taste,” he added.

When it does go out on Radio 4, at 11pm on May 13, it will be accompanied with a warning about its language.One rhyming triplet reads: “Elvis the bumper stickers/ Elvis the white knickers/ Elvis the white nigger ate at Burger King and just kept getting bigger.”

Another that may cause offence proceeds: “Elvis the ecstatic/ Elvis the plastic/ Elvis the elastic with a spastic dance that could explain the energy of America.”

Alice Maynard, chairman of disability charity Scope, said: “While I’m sure Bono didn’t intend to insult disabled people, the word is often used as an offensive reference to someone with cerebral palsy. “Because of this, the word can be very insulting to a disabled person and its use in some contexts is inappropriate and, at worst, discriminatory.”

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